On deconstructing shame (by writing porn)

This is the first in series of blog posts about writing sex. (NSFW, obviously.)

To start with, I strongly believe that all writers benefit from writing porn. There’s a few reasons for this and I’ll be covering each of those in different blog posts. In this post, I’m talking about why it’s a writer’s responsibility to be comfortable with certain kinds of words.

A couple of notes: No, this doesn’t mean I believe there should be porn in all stories, that the porn needs to be shown to other people to ‘count’, or that sex is more important than any other subject matter. (I also don’t believe anyone with traumatic associations to words or acts should be forced or feel obligated to use them: there’s degrees of comfort available here, not a blanket prescription.)

Writing porn in fiction teaches a writer about a wealth of different things, and those are what I’ll be covering.

I believe writing sex makes for better writers not because it’s A Necessary Benchmark To Be A Writer(TM) but because writing sex teaches writers a lot about their craft. (I hesitate to say ‘practice writing sex’ because all writing is, in one form or another, practice, and using the phrase gives the illusion of writing to get to a certain place, instead of writing for its own sake.)

We as a society have so much shame, control and gatekeeping surrounding the subject of sex, sexual topics, and sex-related organs. It’s simultaneously touted as majorly important to a (usually cis male) healthy life, and vilified as something shameful and worth of pearl-clutching (usually in relation to … everyone else).

There’s a lot of reasons to write about sex in general, for one’s own sake and to gain an understanding of one’s own health, body and physicality. What I’m talking about here is specifically the act of writing sexual acts, in fiction, between two people. As said, there’s a few reasons, but the first and arguably most important one is this:

Writing sex demystifies sex.

Who here was the kid who giggled in sex-ed class because ‘penis’ was a no-no word? (Who here was the kid who didn’t get a sex-ed class, who didn’t know how it worked and was too afraid to ask?) Who still giggles nervously when someone says ‘vagina’ out loud? Laughter is often — not always, but often — an instinctive tool to assuage embarrassment, shame or discomfort. The fact that we as a society feel any of those things in relation to sex tells us that sex is a taboo topic, and for a writer, that’s bad.

Writers are wordsmiths. We deal in words. If there are words that make us feel embarrassed, ashamed or uncomfortable just for existing to describe organs and acts that are perfectly normal, then it’s to our benefit to become comfortable with those words. If we don’t, then we aren’t capable of using them in a way which is honest, insightful, respectful, consensual or all of the above. When we let our emotions control the use of words which describe things which are normal and natural, then we aren’t in control of our writing. And that gets in the way of refining our craft.

Penis. Testicles. Urethra. Nipple. Breast. Vagina. Clitoris. Vulva.

These are just words. Some of them still carry a burden of socially-ingrained discomfort for me, mostly because the porn I write is predominantly gay, so I don’t have a huge range of exposure to some of them. When I first started using ‘penis’ and ‘testicles’ in porn, it felt cringe-worthy. Too clinical, too — too. Too everything. Too uncomfortable. Too giggle-worthy.

Now they’re just words. They describe body parts that are applicable in the scene: they let me get to the point instead of trying to sidle around what I want to actually say. Do I try to insert them everywhere, just because I know and am comfortable using them? No, of course not. But they’re tools in my toolbox I’m unafraid to use if a story calls for them.

Sex isn’t the only subject which comes with this kind of emotional baggage: but it’s by far and away the one which carries the most of them. Writing about sex isn’t just writing about the physical act of intercourse. It’s writing about men’s intimacy, women’s pleasure; it’s writing about gay and lesbian and non-binary sexualities; it’s writing about people with trans* and non-binary relationships to their organs and the intersection with their sexual needs. It’s writing about the act of not having sex, by choice, by consent, by lack of need or inclination … about the logistics of physically disabled people having the sex they’re often otherwise denied.

Sex as a topic isn’t only about sex. Demystifying sex-related words enables a writer to talk about them with full awareness of what they’re saying, without fear of the words themselves: and once the fear is gone, it’s easier to apply them to characters and situations we might not have considered beforehand.

Whether the demystification is for the writer’s own sake, to enable them to face other fears, or for the sake of readers who lack exposure to those words, doesn’t matter; a smith who’s afraid of their tools is incapable of using them correctly, and incapable of the active choice not to.